10) Surrealist Collage/drawing

Surrealism. 2007
Pencil on paper.

This is a drawing of a surrealist collage i was asked to do.
It was the first time i tried drawing something extremely detailed, in such a small space.

What i found most challenging of this picture was the grass. It took me really long to get that done.

9) The more he saw the less he spoke..

“A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?”

2007 Acrylic on board.

My first piece in acrylic paintings.

8) Eye Non sense

Damien Hirst's 'Natural'. 2007
Green Jello, Cow and Goat eyes.

We finally got freedom and I started creating pieces of my own. In my entire life i had always seen a type of art that was completely opposite of what i do or what i thought i would always do. I never really understood why people had that stereotypical belief that 'good artists' tend to be weird and creepy sometimes, so i needed to try that. I wanted to go all wicked for once and see how that felt, and that's how i decided to follow Damien Hirst.

Hirst, a British Artist, known for his 'Natural History' series, which present dead animals (such as sharks, sheeps, cows) in vitrines, preserved and sometimes cut-up in formaldehyde. This caught my attention and became my main inspiration for my piece.

In my piece, instead of cutting an animal in parts and preserving it in formol, i used cow and goat eyes (That i bought in a Ghanaian market. 'Makola' Market) and placed them inside green jello that i bought in Max Mart, a grocery store (Pretty good one too, i used to get everything there lol). After i had finished placing all the eyes in the jello and taken them out from the fridge, i cut cubes of jello with the eyes in it and placed them in small cubes i made of glass (I also bought the glass in the market... you can really find anything there it's awesome).
My final piece was 6 of those small cubes with an eye in each of them. The weirdest thing i had ever done in my life.

7) Meta Warrick

Key. 2007
Carved on Soap Bar.

This was another of my pieces where i used the "Key" as my chosen object.
I was inspired by 'Meta Warrick Fuller', an African American artist whose sculptural works were mainly made in bronze, clay, and plaster. When i saw her sculptures i decided i should also try one for the assignment. I wanted to go for the materials her sculptures were usually made of, but i thought it'd be much better to create one out of something unusual. How about soap? Lol

My initial idea was to make it standing, leaving only the bottom part of the key attached to the 'ground' rather than having it lying on it, but since i was living in Ghana, the heat was an issue and i don't know why i thought it would melt easily. Silly me. It would have looked much better.

6) Guerrino Boatto!

Key Project. 2006.
Watercolor on board.

When i was still getting used to painting with watercolors. We had to chose a single object and create several pieces representing that object using different media. This on was watercolor.

I was inspired by the painting of Guerrino Boatto, a surrealist artist who made this amazing painting of a puzzle falling on the shore of a beach. I changed the puzzle for a key, which was the object that i had chosen.

It was probably one of my pieces that i liked the most out of all until that point.

5) The Infinity of Art

Genre. 2006
Mixed Media.

The Infinity Of Art (Text Written in 2006 -11th grade)

"The idea each person has about art differs from one another, nevertheless non of them are wrong. This piece, made out of everyday materials (Toilet paper rolls, and a long string), is a Dadaist reaction to the writing of Leo Braudy who criticizes the idea of genre, a classification of art.
The spiral i made is a contradictory object that goes against the concept of the categorized 'genres' but at the same time it's an object which belong to what people call DADA. Puttig a spiral made out of toilet paper rolls on the floor, for some people, doesn't mean anything, and for that reason, because it makes people question whether it is art or not, because it is completely different than anything else anyone has ever done and because of its absurdity and uniqueness, it is a Dadaist piece.
'The Spiral' symbolizes infinity since it can go on forever. However, because it is impossible for a human to reach infinity, i chose to put all those mirrors surrounding the spiral, giving it a sense of never ending. The reason for why i chose the 'infinite' symbol is because art, in my opinion, has no limits. No one and nothing should stop you from feeling free to do anything you want to do and then call it a piece of art, not even should you be limited by the already set styles, the movements.
The different colors in the spiral represent the different genres of art, that when put together create a unique art object."

4) Organic Forms

Watercolor. 2006.
Watercolor on board.

I had never really painted in watercolor before. It was fun. The assignment was to find organic forms and make a painting of it. What's more organic than nature?, I thought. So that's what i chose.

I've got almost all of my paintings at home and i'm already running our of space in my room so i want to start selling as many as i can. If you are interested in any of them, just let me know.

3) 2006. Lights and Shadows

And i was pretty much done with 2005. I did several more during those 4 months, but they are really not worth showing, partially because i can't find them. Lol.

My family and i moved to Ghana in july 2005. I started school in Accra in August and since i had to repeat that half a year i had just done in Peru, i started 10th grade all over again. Except this time the IB started in 11th grade instead of 10th like in my old school. So i didn't do any art for that entire year until i started 11th grade in 2006. I took Visual Arts HL. Loved it.

Lights and Shadows. 2006
Mixed media.

First assignment to study the light and shadows in anything that surrounds us. I chose one of the hardest things for me to draw in a way that it would look real. Water. I hated drawing water, specially because i always thought it had to be blue or have at least a bit of color. I was wrong. I was assigned to do an extended study of how real water looks like and after several shots of pourring water, i decided to go for it.

It took time, but i thought it was successful. Once again, i was very happy with that part of the piece. The part that was cut didn't really show the study of shadows and lights. Reason why i didn't show it. ;)

2) So i tried drawing faces... (From Peru to Ghana)

Second "good" piece. 2005
So i tried drawing faces...
Pencil on colored board

I took it from a magazine as well, she looked so beautiful i thought i would be good to try and draw her face. After like the 4th try i got this! I remember being so happy about it when i finished it, it had been the best face i had ever drawn, if not the first (A face that simulates reality of course).

I thought my shadows were pretty successful, specially in the nose. You can't see the lines that distinguish the nose from the rest of the face, it's all shadows that give the picture that sense of volume. I was very happy.

1) 2005 - the beginning

My first real piece. 2005.
Charcoal on wrapping paper.
Davy College High School. Cajamarca - Peru.

It was my first half a year of IB in Peru before leaving to Ghana in July of that same year, and i had decided to take Art as one of my HL courses only because i thought it would'nt be as hard. (I had no idea i could ever have any talent when that happened, the truth is, i only did it because i thought it would be easy. lol) So that's how it started.

The assignment was to draw a picture of someone from a magazine using charcoal. I forgot the actual size of this one but it was pretty big, more than a meter of height)
I didn't draw the face because i didn't know how to and i was afraid i would screw it up. That's the truth.

Sort of successful. I found out years later when i saw it again that the proportions of the arms and feet aren't really correct like i initially thought. But i think i did a pretty good job for a beginner.